


Sort of Dating

by her_eyes_looked_sharp_and_steady



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 10:54:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13809693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/her_eyes_looked_sharp_and_steady/pseuds/her_eyes_looked_sharp_and_steady
Summary: AvaLance fluff





	Sort of Dating

Just because Sara and Ava are sort-of-technically-dating now doesn’t mean it’s any less of a bad idea to give them something to argue about. The rest of the Legends can hear them from the galley, even without Gideon’s help.

“You cannot be serious.”

“Oh, I’m very serious, Agent Sharpe. It is a serious crime that you haven’t seen _High School Musical_. Being born in the future is absolutely no excuse for missing out on real culture,” Sara says, doing her best to keep from outwardly snorting at the firm line Ava’s mouth has pressed into. Still, the sly twinkle in her eyes doesn’t escape Ava, who knows that she will almost immediately regret going along with whatever Sara has planned.

 

Ten minutes into the movie, Ava can no longer count the number of times she’s rolled her eyes at the obvious stereotypes and the fact that the two leads just coincidentally manage to end up in the same high school right after they “sang” together. Sara half-laying across her lap is the only thing keeping her on the couch at all, but even that is looking negotiable.

She lasts another 5 minutes.

“I can’t sit here and watch this. The secondhand embarrassment is very real,” Ava complains. “I don’t understand how on earth you grew up with this.”

Sara smirks from her position on Ava’s lap, nudging her hand where it stopped gently playing with her hair. “Ava?” Sara mumbles.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up and watch the movie.”

 

Half an hour later, Sara’s dictating the finer points of the rest of the trilogy (apparently there are three?) when it occurs to her to ask, “Are you even listening?”

“Yes, it just takes me a while to process so much stupid all at once,” Ava snarks, mostly asleep. Apparently, that wasn’t the correct answer, because she finds herself watching _High School Musical 2_ and _3_ as soon as the first one ends.

 

It wouldn’t have been a problem, except she was supposed to attend a meeting that Director Bennett called to address the Legends’ latest mission, an escalation of what should’ve been a simple, low-level anachronism. A meeting that she ended up sleeping through because Sara was warm and splayed out across her and insisted they had to watch all three movies.

Needless to say, Ava’s pissed.

“Aves, we’re on a time ship. It’s not a big deal,” Sara argues. “We can go back to the time of the meeting and it’ll be fine. No one will know.”

Ava huffs in frustration. “You know, that’s not what an apology sounds like,” she says, and Sara can literally see her girlfriend’s transformation back into her Time Bureau Agent persona (and no, it isn’t just the fact that her hair is back in the regulation bun).

“You’re ignoring the fact that it doesn’t matter! It’s like you want to find a reason to be mad at me,” Sara mutters. The fight has mostly drained out of her, but the hurt remains.

It doesn’t help that Ava has missed three other meetings with the director in recent memory due to working with the Legends. She’s never been the type of person, let alone agent, to defy the rules. Still, she’s spent almost as much time on the Waverider as she has in her office as of late.

Ava’s tired, and there’s a stinging undercurrent when she says, “I find that answer vague and unconvincing.”

 

Naturally, that’s when the situation goes to shit.

Ava and Sara are still engaged in their latest pissing contest and the meeting with Director Bennett is still hanging overhead, but there’s a level 9 anachronism that has jumped two levels since Gideon notified the Legends and they really don’t have time to argue. So Ava finds herself tagging along with the Legends yet again, holding on to the slimmest of hopes that it won’t get worse than it already has.

But then again, who even notices when Genghis Khan marches his troops through Central Park during a Garth Brooks show in the summer of 1997?

 

What the **_fuck_**.

No one knows exactly how many people are at this stupid concert and if Ava didn’t firmly dislike country music before, she certainly does now. Some dumbass wearing boots and a cowboy hat briefly paws at her ass as she marches past, hot on the heels of a particularly stubborn Mongolian regiment.

Ava whirls around in a fury, hissing, “I will kill you, burn you, and dance on your ashes.” 

The wannabe cowboy rears back in surprise, his face a twisted mask of fear. Almost immediately, she hears Sara over the comms, “You’ve probably been told this before, but  _wow_ , you are intense.”

“Please stop talking, I’m trying to get us out alive,” Ava snaps, trying to deal with several thousand angry Mongolians while avoiding almost a million drunk country music fans. It’s almost as impossible a task as it sounds.

Sara carries on like Ava never said anything, “Was the point to scare him shitless? Because if he’s a goner, it’s not an entirely lost cause. You know, you can get a lot for a kidney on the black market.”

Ava is so fucking done with Sara.

“You still have all your fingers, but that can easily be fixed,” she threatens.

“Nah,” Sara casually dismisses the threat. “You’re rather fond of a couple of them, at least.”

That settles it. Ava is going to fucking murder Sara and she won’t even feel bad about it. She’s so caught up in her fury that she barely notices the fact that she has Genghis Khan at gunpoint.

“Whoa, hold up,” Sara comes rushing in behind Ava, who turns and levels her with a look. “Okay, okay, message received, got it. I’m not saying you can’t shoot him. I’m just saying you can’t shoot him here.”

That, unfortunately, brings Ava back into her surroundings. Realizing the gun is still pointed at Khan, she slowly lowers it, but keeps eye contact with him on the off chance he might try to run away. She sends one last glare Sara’s way before walking off into a portal back to the Time Bureau to face the music.

 

They don’t speak for three weeks.

The only reason they’re talking now is because Amaya called Ava in a rush when Sara took the jump ship to Star City 2017. Ava finds Sara at Verdant, Oliver Queen’s nightclub, hunched over the bar in a way that almost seems vulnerable.

Ava settles next to her, letting the silence hang for a minute before she speaks. “I thought you wanted to start dealing with your job in a healthy way,” she says gently, careful to keep any accusing notes out of her tone.

“You mean alcohol isn’t an appropriate coping mechanism? It’s working,” Sara says, tossing back the bottom of her glass. “And who ever said this was about the Legends?”

Ava knows they didn’t exactly leave things between them on the best of terms, but she maintains it wasn’t entirely her fault. “Sara,” she starts, then pauses. “I don’t… we need to have an adult conversation. That involves both of us listening to the other and not just yelling.”

“Being an adult is overrated. You have to pay taxes and people frown at you for watching cartoons in your PJs all Saturday and eating ice cream for breakfast,” Sara mutters under her breath, but she nods anyway.

 

Ava swears all of time is just trying to fuck with them. The moment she gets Sara heading towards the jump ship, they both get a notification of yet another major anachronism. This time, the Legends tried to handle it on their own without any sort of supervision, and it shows when Sara and Ava show up to find Winston Churchill at a women’s rights march.

Yup. Everyone’s a little confused by that one.

As the day goes on, Ava and Sara are drawn into a series of increasingly far-fetched scenarios and anachronisms that seem to test the fabric of time itself.

“Should we try to poison him again?” Sara wonders as they watch a moderately-impaired Socrates stagger through New York Comic Con in 2014.

Ava looks appropriately mortified at the suggestion, hissing, “Stop saying things like that so loud!”

 

In the end, it takes them three days to be in the same place and time long enough to have a proper conversation.

“It’s just… I thought we moved past the point where it was the Legends vs. the Time Bureau. We’re not totally incompetent! Sure, we need an outside point-of-view sometimes, but that’s why we need you. Why I need you. You bring this sense of normalcy that rarely exists anywhere near this timeship. God Ava, it’s like sometimes you can’t see that you’re half the reason things are still held together here.

“And when you go back to trying to be a suit… it feels like everything we’ve accomplished is secondary to a corrupted organization that still has more of your loyalty than we do. And I know it can’t be easy, trying to balance the way we usually do things with your instinct for rules or protocols or whatever, but it feels like you’re trying to find reasons to pull away sometimes. It’s just…” Sara trails off, picking up the picture of her family and staring at it until her tears blur the faces. “It never seems to work out when I really like someone, and I need this to be different. Just this once.”

“Sara, I’m… I’m not a suit. Not anymore. The Time Bureau just offered me what I couldn’t refuse: money. I was fresh out of the army, with no family and nowhere to go until Director Hunter showed up and gave me a purpose. So I put my head down and did what I was supposed to do, and I was miserable. The Agent Sharpe you first met would be horrified by my life now.

It’s just… a lot of change. And I’m terrible at relationships. So I just need you to be patient with me. I… I _like_ you a lot. I don’t want to mess this up either.”

There are dried tear tracks down Sara’s cheeks when she turns around, but the cheeky grin she sports is so ineffably _Sara_ that it’s all Ava can do not to cross the space between them and kiss her.

“Who would’ve guessed… Agent Sharpe is a real person after all,” Sara teases with a glint in her eyes.

Ava manages an impressive amount of facial control and offers, stone-faced, “I don’t like salad. Or eye contact.”

The corner of her mouth twitches and gives her away, prompting Sara to don her most dangerous smirk as she strides over to Ava and presses their mouths together in a searing kiss.

 

They still argue, even though they’re officially dating now. Sara forgets what it’s like to go into the field without Ava by her side, doing her best to elicit the trademark affectionate eye roll that Ava seems to save solely for her. She hasn’t gone this long without nightmares since the Gambit.

 

Sometimes Ava really isn’t sure if she wants to kiss or hit Sara.

Aztec sun warriors are bearing down on the two of them, and it’s kill or be killed. And she doesn’t really feel like being sacrificed to the sun god right now.

“Y’know, murder wasn’t on today’s agenda,” Ava hears from somewhere behind her as Sara whirls around and nearly decapitates a warrior headed straight for Ava’s blind spot. 

This is one of those times.

“It’s not on anyone’s!”

“No, it is on mine. Just not until next Tuesday,” Sara quips. “But all that blood looks good on you. It brings out your eyes.”

Kiss or hit. She really can’t decide.

 

A couple weeks later, it’s still a genuine debate. Though Ava supposes at this point it’s just a cornerstone of their relationship.

“Keep your morals far away from me,” Sara jokingly raises a hex symbol at Ava, who’s in the middle of insisting that she should probably take on some of the chores on the Waverider since she practically lives there. Sara’s having none of it, though it’s probably best for everyone if Mick spends less time in the kitchen. They’ve been stuck on this point for weeks, ever since Ava went back to her apartment one night and found a clear inch of dust on her dining room table from disuse.

This time, thankfully, they’re interrupted by Nate messing with Gideon and causing a ship-wide shutdown of all communication devices in retaliation. Before their connection cuts out, Ava can clearly hear Sara yell, “Are you always this stupid or is today a special occasion?!”

Sara’s only able to call back a couple hours later, by Bureau time.

“Oh. You’re still alive,” Ava says, mildly surprised that the Legends lasted that long without their AI running basically the entire timeship. Sara’s sitting at her desk in the captain’s quarters with her head firmly planted on the surface in front of her, looking a little worse for wear.

“Don’t sound so disappointed. I might think you don’t like me,” Sara teases, briefly lifting her head off the desk. “Nate, however… let’s just say he won’t be trying that one again. Gideon holds a grudge for a long time, and there’s only so long we can run interference before she starts really messing with him. I think we could both use a glass of wine though. And maybe some separation from my crew.”

“Are you admitting that your band of misfits can be annoying?” Ava asks, unable to hold back her smirk.

Sara considers denying it before caving at the knowing look on her girlfriend’s face and returning her head to the desk. “Okay, fine, yes. My head hurts so badly I feel like I’m being stabbed in the head.” 

“How do you even know what it feels like to be stabbed in the head? When I first got assigned to your case, I read the entire contents of your file. As impressive as it is, you’ve never gotten stabbed in the head,” Ava comments wryly.

Sara lifts her head enough to shoot a half-hearted glare Ava’s way.

“I’ll meet you at my place in 10 minutes, if you can last that long without killing anyone.”

If anyone asks why she left the office two hours earlier than usual, well, the Legends were having an emergency. It’s for the benefit of everyone and the timeline itself that she pours two glasses of wine and makes her way over to the couch, where Sara is already changed into pajamas and watching the Food Network. Absolutely.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> vaguely-Tumblr-inspired fluff because my other fic is winding down and AvaLance is hella cute


End file.
